Page 190 of Morally Black Betrothal

I knew I’d hear their echoes for the rest of my life, but I welcomed the legacy. A reminder of my brutality and what I was willing to do for the people I loved.

Because even in the darkness falling over the farm, even as the sirens sounded in the distance, I knew I did the right thing.

Simone was my saving grace. She always would be.

My soul was black from the beginning. It could take a few final marks to save hers.

45

LOST IN A SONG

Brendan

Iwoke to the soft warmth of Simone curled against my side, the musky hint of woodsmoke curling to my nose, and the song of a goldfinch in my ear.

It took me a moment to remember where I was.

A girlish bedroom painted the color of the sky, in which a few spare cobwebs swayed like friendly streamers in the old farmhouse rafters. A wrought-iron bed that barely fit my frame, let alone the angelic being tucked under my arm.

Simone and I had gotten maybe a few hours of sleep when we returned to the farmhouse sometime past one in the morning. Selena had been taken straight to the hospital to be treated for whatever drug Ezra had given her, but she would be released straight into police custody following her recovery. A social worker quickly released Kylie into the care of her grandfather, but only after the little girl insisted on giving the police her two cents on the events.

The Woodstock police, as provincial as they were, insisted on the full due process when they were called to the scene oftwo dead men in the woods, including one who was the son of a prominent local figure. Not prominent enough. While Simone, my security team, and I were all held for questioning, the police quickly realized they could not charge us with anything related to Ezra’s death, given that I had a slew of witnesses. Kidnapping, trespassing, extortion, threat to bodily harm—the law was on my side, even if it took several hours to get there.

“It’s called castle doctrine,” I had told Simone on our way to the station when she worried that I would be arrested for murder. “The right to repel intruders from your home.”

Simone’s face blanched as she buried her face in my shoulder, as if it reminded her exactly what had happened to her and her family.

“For once, I’m glad they call me The Black Prince,” I continued as I stroked her hair, “because that fucker made this place my castle the second I signed that document. He stormed it. He had it coming.”

Bas Huntington, Ezra’s father, seemed to agree when he surprised everyone by declining to press charges or even collect his son’s body.

Even more surprising, however, was Simone’s reaction the second her bedroom door shut behind us. I was grateful her father’s room was on the floor below, shielded by three-hundred-year-old beams and substantial insulation, because the way my girl jumped me would have woken a graveyard.

Simone shifted, her back turned to me in the bed. I rolled over and pressed a kiss to her shoulder, and oddly, she tensed, the first sign that she was awake.

“Good morning, angel.”

She turned, her sky-blue eyes still blinking with sleep. Her golden hair was mussed from sleep and sex, and a few marks dappled her skin where I’d left too-rough kisses.

God, she was beautiful. And by some miracle, all mine.

“Hi.”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “What time is it?”

“6:20. I’m sorry I woke you.” The shake, the one I’d heard when she was tied to a chair, was back in her voice.

Our golden haze disappeared.

On instinct, I swung my legs out of bed and stood on guard, uncaring for the fact that I was naked. Whatever had her scared was going to pay whether my dick was out or not. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

The fear in her expression intensified as she held up her phone. “They know.”

I frowned as I yanked on my boxers. “Who? And what do they know?”

“Everyone knows. They know I’m not your fiancée. That you never loved me. That we were never real.”

I took the phone and sat on the bed next to her. “Fuck.”